But he was not called up to the senior squad.

Yet.

Plus, the club had far more invested in Adriano than in Andreolli – we had to see if we could get back our money.

Yeah, he spent the last season at some Serie B club, Sassuolo or something. The thing that gets me is, if we can sit with a depressed alcoholic for three years, why can’t we stick by a young defender through injury?

I thought at his 18th he became eligable to get his passport, but that it hadnt come through till recently, anyway, its not a big issue.

We sold the other half to bring the price of Mancini down to just over 10 million Euros.

Andreolli, during his time with Inter, was injured quite a bit of the time – he had a chronic back problem I think – he only made 7 appearances for us in 3 years.

He hasn’t actually played a game for Roma, who had loaned him out this past season. The 2008-2009 season was the most playing time he had in 4 years and that translated to only 28 games.

If memory serves correctly, he spent the 2007-2008 season injured as well.

Now he’s still young, 22 or 23, and he’s a prospect still (he makes it on the U21 teams), but he has only one season under his belt since he turned 18. He could still make it big – but I think the odds are against him at this point.

With that said, they made a huge mistake with Aqua. He is an amazing talent. He is Italian. And he is just the type of goalscorer I would LOVE to see in the black and blue.

As for Aquafresca, I have no idea what his status is.

However, our youth policy, though generally good, has been a little suspect at times. For instance, Marco Andreolli was long touted as one of Italy’s brightest young centre-backs, the kind that has entirely skipped a generation till Chiellini. We’d already loaned him out once, but strangely, gave him up to Roma entirely as part of the Chivu deal. Chivu’s a world-class player, no doubt, but did we really have to give up a prospect like Andreolli totally, instead of a part-ownership deal at least?

Another strange story is that of Acquafresca’s. Again, promising player, had been doing really well, and strangest of all, Moratti claimed in Feb/March that he was coming back to Inter at the end of the season. I’m still not sure if he’s going to Genoa or not, but the press seems to assume its a done deal. Either way, its pretty clear we’ve turned him against us. At one time, he was saying that he and Balotelli were the future strike force of the Azzuri and Inter. Now, he’s hurt and not likely to come back to us.

Hope to see some of the kids in Boston later on this summer.